Prior to modern computer capabilities, almost all translations were performed by a human translator. For example, during a conference of parties speaking different languages, it was common for a member to communicate with a human translator who could translate for both parties. However, due to the advancement of computer capabilities, statistical machine translation (SMT) has become more available.
In general, SMT involves the translation of text from a source language (SL) to a target language (TL), generally by utilizing a computing system to carry out machine translation operations. Many modern SMT systems involve the use of computer software to translate text or speech. The relatively high speed with which modern computer systems can process large quantities of data makes SMT a powerful tool for quickly translating large volumes of text.